Matthieu Marre & Ulrike Schmitz

As part of the post-war reparations, German aircraft development specialists were forcibly relocated to the Soviet Union to work for the Russian aircraft industry. For that reason Ulrike Schmitz‘s grandparents came to Podberesje – north of Moscow – in 1946, where they lived with their four children until 1954. Her series “Museum of Your Memory“, which combines images from today’s village with film stills of Russian films from the Stalin era, now meets Matthieu Marre‘s works, which were created during his two-month artist’s residence in the photo factory. The photographer, who lives in Belgium, dealt with the memory of the war that ended more than 70 years ago – in conversation as well as through the collection of old photographs of the time. By stacking and stringing his explorations together, he once again lets the desire for peace collide with the fear of destruction and loss.

The Brussels based photographer Matthieu Marre lived & worked for 2 months (April & May 2017) – thanks to support from Wallonie-Bruxelles International – as Resident Artist in Fotofabrik Bln-Bxl. The work produced during this residency is shown at this exhibition.

Ulrike Schmitz

Ulrike Schmitz studied photography at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin. She is currently taking part in the postgraduate master program of the Berlin University of the Arts. She was selected for the five-year exhibition program reGeneration3 of the Musée de l’Elysée and for PLAT(T)FORM of the Fotomuseum Winterthur. Her works have been exhibited in Germany and internationally, among others at the Benaki Museum, Athens, the Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico-City, the Lishui Art Museum galleries, China, at the Festival Circulation(s), Paris and in the context of the Voies Off Award nomination in Arles, France.

Matthieu Marre

During a journey Matthieu Marre begins to take photographs. He later studied anthropology at the EHESS School of Social Sciences in Paris, where he conducted research on palliative care. In his work he tries to capture the emotion of his gaze to reach a kind of framework – or at least something he is not aware of. A never-ending research. He is interested in the accidents that can happen while photographing, developing or printing. He’s hoping for a revelation. Photography is a key and an anchor for him – to what extent he cannot say. There is this quote by Fernando Pessoa: “What we see is not what we see, but what we are.” His book “L’oublié” (The Forgotten) was published in 2015 by Éditions Yellow Now, Liège. In 2016 he became a member of Studio Hans Lucas.

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